


Power Plays sidestory - A Doomed Nation

by Kizmet



Series: MCU Skrull Invasion [2]
Category: Fantastic Four, Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Jessica Jones (TV) Spoilers, Latveria, Mass Death, No Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Season/Series 02 Finale, Skrull(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:11:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: The Skrull Invasion of Latveria.  Kristoff Vernard, age eleven,'s discovery of the invasion.  Doom and F4's attempts to fight it.  Trish Walker's coverage.





	Power Plays sidestory - A Doomed Nation

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this got longer than I expected real quick. I’m thinking at least a two shot. F4 characters are mostly drawn from the Ultimate Verse and 616 as I haven’t seen the most recent movie and the earlier series was long enough back that I don’t really remember it in anything but the broadest strokes. Also Spoilers for “Jessica Jones” S2 finale coming in part two.

Like it’s near neighbor Sokovia, Latveria had entered a turbulent period of near constant civil war and repeated coups starting in the early eighties. But, where Sokovia’s internal strife lasted until the country’s disastrous encounter with Ultron and the Avengers in 2015, Latveria’s civil wars ended decisively in 2010.

That was the year that Victor von Doom, a young man barely twenty years old, who had fled the country half a decade earlier, returned to his homeland. His arrival was heralded by three of the region’s stronger militias suddenly falling on each other in an orgy of murderous intent with no obvious explanation for the explosion of violence that served no purpose but mutual destruction. But one thing was indisputable: The confluence cleared the board for the young, soon-to-be dictator’s rise to power. Doom stepped on the world stage with a promise to return Latveria to the good old days… All the people had to do was lay down their arms, swear fealty to him and he’d see to it that they could live their lives in peace. Then Doom slaughtered the first person to laugh. He unveiled a veritable army of armored knights with futuristic weapons. The few knights who were defeated were discovered to be hollow men, envenorated by an eldritch energy. Eight months later Doom was the only military force left in Latveria.

Doom surrendered some land to his neighbors for treaties. In the years that followed it would become apparent that Doom had kept the richest mineral veins, a fertile plain and his new borders were more suitable for the defenses at his command than the old ones had been. He blew up the roads, caved in several passes and built a hydroelectric dam across the canyon which had been the primary gateway into his country. In the space of a few short years Latveria became one of the most isolationist countries in the world. It had enough resources to support its populace and Doom’s mechanized military but not so much as to make it worth the cost of attempting to wrest it from Doom’s hands.

Doom promised to provide his subjects with peace and security. He restructured the government of Latveria into a feudal system and divided up his subjects assigning most to farming or mining. His automan completely replaced a traditional military, whatever drain on his powers that they represented was apparently one he was willing to pay. He built a new capital and named it Doomstadt in his own honor. It was the only city left in Latveria and became home to the small merchant, and artisan classes that he allowed to remain. Human rights groups vigorously questioned what was happening behind Latveria’s closed borders, but most of the world was happy enough to forget about the just over 500,000 people living there.

* * *

 

 

**2015 - Shortly after the Battle of Sokovia**

A green skinned alien with multiply clefted chins watched from above as an unconscious blond human in red, white and blue was strapped into the memory capturing device that the Skrull had developed from technology acquired several decades earlier during an otherwise disastrous attempt to infiltrate a cybernetic, hive-minded species.

The unit commander of the advance guard sent to Earth, currently wearing the face of a dark skinned human equipped with metal wings, took a moment to ensure that his prize was properly secured then he joined his superior in the observation room above the lab. Standing at attention he waited to be noticed.

“The leader of the Avengers, possessing enhanced strength and reflexes. Excellent, I won’t have to hold back.”

The Skrull posing as Sam Wilson bowed his head, “Remembering how weak humans are is one of the more difficult aspects of my cover,” he said.

“What else have you done to prepare the way for my invasion, beyond bringing me this one?”

“The Chitauri attempt to invade this planet was pathetic. They allowed themselves to be forced into a bottleneck war opposed by Earth’s strongest warriors. As a result their army was defeated by a single unit composed of six warriors whose individual abilities are equal anywhere from a dozen to several hundred of Earth’s baseline military forces. A much more successful invasion of this planet’s various governmental forces was staged internally by a subversive splinter group of humanity. My advance guard’s arrival coincided with the discovery and exposure of that infiltration.”

The Skrull commander frowned, “So they are on guard against another infiltration, this is not good news.”

“Not at all,” the Skrull-Wilson replied. “They haven’t changed their methods at all. During the chaos caused by efforts to clean the splinter group, HYDRA, from their organizations I was able to replace a member of the new US Secretary of State’s staff with one of my agents. Similarly I have placed agents within the upper echelons of the Russian military and have three agents within the United Nations and one within one of the two known splinters of S.H.I.E.L.D. to go underground when the organization was formally disbanded.”

“Only one of two?”

“They’re infiltrating each other, for my unit to infiltrate both would have been a redundancy not worth the bother given my limited manpower,” Skrull-Wilson replied. “I was able to secure S.H.I.E.L.D.’s cloaking technology. The personnel disguises are, naturally, inferior to our shape-shifting capability but their ship cloaking technology is state of the art for the planet, with it in our possession no force on Earth will be capable of spotting our ships as they make landfall.

“I’ve also located an ideal spot for us to begin amassing forces on Earth.” He called up a map on the screen to the commander’s left and zoomed in on a small Eastern European country. “Latveria. The country practices a policy of near total isolation, their dictator, Victor von Doom, is also their only diplomat, the only individual in regular contact with anyone outside of their borders. The country’s military is fully automated, manned by golem created via a mixture of technology and magic controlled by Doom. He has fully disarmed the populace and focused his military might almost exclusively outward. Doom’s attention is frequently consumed by his rivalry with an American scientist and explorer known as Reed Richards. Outside of his capital city the people of the country have all but reverted to a pre-Industrialization lifestyle. As long as we make sure that Doomstadt continues to receive it’s regular deliveries of food and mineral ore they won’t notice or care who is making the deliveries.

“We will have to employ additional care not to be detected as we spread to Doomstadt itself, but I believe it should be imminently possible to take the entire country without the world becoming any wiser as long as we simply allow Doom himself to continue on as he has for the last half decade.”

“You have done well.”

 

* * *

 

 

**2017**

Kristoff Vernard was eleven years old when the Skrull came to Doomstadt.

As the hands of the clock hanging above the blackboard crept ever closer to the end of the day Kristoff stole glances at his two friends Jusuf and Nagy. When he caught their eyes he’d flick his gaze in the direction of the factory on the hill. He didn’t dare pass notes, Mrs. Ungur was a strict and eagle-eyed teacher, just trading looks put them at risk for a rap on the knuckles from her ruler. When the bell finally the three children darted out, they jogged up the hill and slipped into the factory where their parents worked, maintaining the equipment that made the Knights of Latveria, Doom’s army that kept them all safe.

In Kristoff’s eyes the factory was an amazing place. Always buzzing with activity: Robot arms moved over the assembly lines, welding, cutting and shaping, wiring and assembling. Sparks flew and the sound of metal on metal rang out at all hours of the day and night. Squat, autonomous, wheeled carts raced around between the lines removing waste and restocking consumables. He and his friends darted and dodged between the rows of equipment, laughing and chattering. “Hide and seek?” Nagy asked.

“Not it!” Kristoff and Jusuf immediately exclaimed. Nagy stuck her tongue out at the two boys then covered her and started counting.

“Just make sure it’s not my mom that finds us!” Kristoff called back as he and Jusuf scattered to find hiding spots. “She’ll put us to work!” Then he headed straight for the loading dock, Kristoff knew a shipment of ore was coming in and that, shortly, his mother would be busy getting it unloaded. She’d be the perfect, unknowing guard for his hiding spot… As long as he got there before the truck did. He skidded to a stop around the corner from his mom’s office then, after a careful check around, he crept past her window, eased open one of the two doors to a cabinet where they kept a vacuum for cleaning up spills and crawled inside. Kristoff carefully pulled the door shut behind him and made a comfortable nest in the coils of vacuum tubing as he settled in for the long haul.

A few minutes later Kristoff heard the truck’s engine, he grinned at his narrow escape and pressed his eye to the crack between the two doors. _‘If it’s Mr. Petran making the delivery it might be worth losing the game to say hi. He always has the best candy and good stories too, even if country people are supposed to be sort of backwards.’_

Kristoff felt a small pang of disappointment as the truck pulled up to the dock and a driver he didn’t know opened the door. He saw his mom come out of her office, with a smile and a wave to greet the new driver. Then everything in Kristoff’s world stopped, shattered and when it started again it was as if Kristoff were looking through some sort of twisted fun house mirror.

Kristoff’s hand was crammed in his mouth to keep back the sounds-screams that wanted to force their way out of his throat. Bangs echoed through the cabinet where he hit as his mother’s heels kicked against the door. The driver held her off the floor, both hands wrapped around her throat, until she stopped kicking, until she hung limp in his grasp.

Then the back door of the truck rolled up and a green demon stepped out. Kristoff watched as it examined his mother’s body from one angle and then another before sitting down on the floor and meditating for a moment. The demon’s body seemed to shift and blur and it became a perfect replica of Kristoff’s mother.

“Search the factory!” the thing that now looked like Kristoff’s mother ordered. “There should be three more humans on this shift.” He, the driver and two others spread out from the dock, moving like hunting hounds. Kristoff wanted to burst out of the cabinet and yell for his friends and their parents to run away. He wanted Doom and a legion of the Knights of Latveria to swoop down and smash the green demons. He wanted his mother to get up and laugh and tell him everything was okay.

The people from the truck came back. Nagy was screaming and kicking as she hung from one of the men’s fist. Jusuf’s face was covered in a spray of blood, he clung to his father’s ankle as the driver carried the man back to the loading dock over his shoulder. They tossed the bodies on the floor in front of the cabinet where Kristoff was hidden. “We can’t replicate the young ones,” the driver said scowling at Nagy and Jusuf as if they were shit on his shoes. “The mass differential is too great.”

“Make them tell you where they live before you kill them,” the one with his mother’s face ordered. “If we replace their progenitors it will be simple enough to cover their disappearance.”

Kristoff huddled in the back of the cupboard, eyes screwed shut, hands tight over his mouth, trying not to hear the screams, the sobs, the silence that came after. He stayed there, barely daring to breath, for hours. When he couldn’t stand it anymore he rolled back onto his knees and pressed his eye to the crack between the doors. The truck was gone, the loading dock empty. The green demons and the people they’d become were gone. The bodies were gone.

Kristoff eased the door open and slipped out of the cupboard. _‘Need help!’_ The boy headed deeper into the factory. To the end of the line, where the fully assembled Knights of Latveria, or Doombots as the rest of the world derisively called them, were staged before Lord Doom summoned them up to the castle.

Kristoff had come to the factory with his mother for half his life, he’d shadowed her as she serviced the machines, handing her tools and watching attentively in hopes that he’d be allowed to follow in her footsteps someday. When he’d left his friends earlier that day to hide it had taken him fifteen minutes to cross the football field sized factory floor with its maze of equipment but it took him nearly an hour to retrace his steps. He crept from shadow to shadow, fearful that the creatures that had killed his mother might come back at any moment. Until, finally Kristoff reached the place where the completed knights stood at attention in orderly ranks, waiting to be summoned into service.

“S-sir!” Kristoff exclaimed reaching up to grab one of the knights’ hands. “Demons! They k- hurt my mom, my friends. Took their faces. In the city- Hurting more- S-stop them, please?”

None of the knights even glanced at the boy.

“Please?” Kristoff repeated over and over again. Eventually, receiving no response, the despondent boy slipped back into the more active areas of the factory. He hid in a hollow beneath one of the assembly stations where the familiar sounds and movements of the robot arms provided an illusion of security. Kristoff saw the evening shift moving around the machines, performing their PMs as normal but he remembered the green demon taking his mother’s form and he didn’t go to them.

Two days later, feeling hungrier than he ever had before in his life, Kristoff slipped out of the factory at dawn. _‘They can’t pretend to be kids like me,’_ he remembered and walked back to his school. _‘I’ll just go to class like normal, EAT LUNCH, then I can come back here and hide again when it’s time to go home.’_

But where the school had been full of life only days earlier, now it was empty and silent. Driven by hunger Kristoff ignored the haunted feel of the abandoned school. He squeezed in through a restroom window that he knew hadn’t latched properly for months. But as soon as he cracked open the door he was assaulted by a horrible stench. Peeking around the door into the darkened cafeteria Kristoff saw Mrs. Unger staring straight through him, her sharp eyes filmed over by death. She lay carelessly draped over a pile of bodies, Kristoff’s other teachers and many of his friends. A strangled screech escaped him as he scrambled backwards, clapping his hands over his mouth as, once again he physically shoved down the screams that wanted to escape him.

Later, much later, when he could take his hands away from his mouth without risking discovery, Kristoff squeezed back through the window. On his retreat back to the factory he remembered a waystation where the shipment drivers would stop for a meal before leaving the city and his stomach persuaded him to make a detour. The restaurant was louder and more raucous than Kristoff remembered but he found more than a few bones with meat still clinging to them in the garbage can behind the kitchen.

In the weeks that followed Kristoff fell into a routine of hiding in the factory during the day and sneaking into town under the cover of night to scavenge for food. He saw people drinking and laughing together who didn’t belong together, he saw them smirking at their reflections as if looking at something ridiculous and he knew that they weren’t people, just demons in disguise.

One day Kristoff heard a rumble and dozens of the Knights suddenly took off, flying in the direction of Doom’s castle and Kristoff remembered that even though the Knights were fully assembled they weren’t truly complete until Lord Doom had given them the will to serve. And Kristoff knew what he had to do. The activated Knights weren’t stationed in the city, they guarded the borders and Lord Doom’s castle. So Kristoff gathered what little supplies he’d managed to acquire and under the cloak of night, snuck out of the city to begin the long trek up the mountain to where Doom’s castle stood guard over their country. Days later the determined little boy found himself at the gate of the castle.

Unlike the knights in the factory, the ones guarding Doom’s castle turned their heads to follow Kristoff’s movements as he approached. “What is your purpose?” one of the two Knights guarding the entrance asked.

Kristoff opened his mouth to speak and suddenly- He was back in the cupboard, hands over his mouth trying to keep the sound in as he watched his mother’s murder. He was in the school cafeteria, his soul being skewered by his teacher’s dead eyes. He was hiding in dozens of alleyways, digging through trash cans for food while demons pretending to be people laughed and had plenty and would have killed him without hesitation if they’d heard him. His throat closed over and sound refused to come out.

The knight looked down at Kristoff, “You are a child. You are not authorized to be here. It is dangerous for you to be alone.” It considered him for a moment. The boy was clearly a citizen of Latveria, a subject of Doom, and thus a person to be protected. “I will take you to the city. They will locate your parents.”

Kristoff’s heart raced, tears filled his eyes. He turned and fled.

The knight stared after him. If the boy had been aggressive it would have classified him as a rebel and dealt with him preemptively. The child had ran away, it was disobedient and irrational but did not classify as aggression against a representative of Doom, the boy retained classification as a subject. To chase after the boy would be an act of aggression and it was not in the knight’s programing to act aggressively toward subjects of Doom. It would have been in the child’s best interest to be returned to its parents, the knight felt some impetuous in that direction, but not enough to both abandon it’s post and act aggressively toward a subject. It watched the child flee into the night with a vague dissatisfaction at the course it had chosen but it seemed the most in line with it’s program parameters.

 

* * *

 

 

**2018**

 

As soon as his team made it back to their home dimension after months of being elsewhere Ben Grimm headed straight for the computer Reed had adapted with an oversized, specially reinforced keyboard and set to work catching up on what had happened in the world while they’d been gone.

“Aww dammit all to hell,” Ben swore, mixture of guilt and anger swirling in his gut. “I knew there was gonna be something come up. But this Thanos guy and an invasion of shapeshifters back to back?” They’d known things were tenuous with the Avengers falling apart at the seams and the plan had been to stick close to home for a bit so they could lend a hand if needed. But Reed had seen a shot at giving Ben the ability to turn his powers off at will like Johnny and Sue could and he’d leapt at it. Ben didn’t know whether to feel guilty for being the reason they were off planet when shit went down or to feel angry that Reed didn’t get it: Yes, he wanted a normal life back but not at the cost of not being there when he was needed.

Ben kept reading. After a few hours he switched over from news sites to pinging an old friend from his Air Force days and got the full scoop on what was going on from Sam Wilson… Who, it turned out, had been kidnapped by the shapeshifting aliens four years earlier. A fact which left Ben feeling vaguely nauseated. He and Sam Wilson had gotten together twice a year for drinks, ever since doing a tour together in 2009. When Ben had shown up in 2015 looking more like walking pile of boulders than a man and Sam hadn’t batted an eye it had meant a lot. To find out now that it hadn’t been Sam Wilson at all... Ben wondered if Sam even knew about what had happened to him yet.

But, first even if his team had missed out on Thanos it didn’t mean that there wasn’t plenty of work left to be done. Ben called his team together to bring them up to date on the shitshow they’d come home to. “For anyone who had more important things to do than catch up on the news,” Ben said throwing a quick glare at Johnny. The youngest of the four dropped his gaze as he wiped a smudge of lipstick off the corner of his jaw. “The Earth’s in the middle of an invasion. Sneaky, shapeshifting bastards, not an in your face bunch like what happened in 2012.”

“I had a chat with Princess Shuri,” Reed said. “It seems like the Avengers and associates have got detection in hand. The police state mentality, having to provide blood evidence that you’re who you say you are everywhere you go is a little… um… uncomfortable. But at least for the moment Stark’s crew are keeping it from getting too of hand and-”

Sue shrugged, “Airport security gets tightened after a terrorist attack, this is being driven by the same thinking, the same fear: Don’t let it happen again. I’ve been talking with Doctors Cho, Banner and Strange, they’re working on a way of detecting Skrulls at a distance. The Kree say it’s impossible but we have to try.”

“I’d take everything the Kree say with a grain of salt,” Ben huffed. “What I hear from Wilson is that they’re _happy_ to help anyone get rid of the Skrull but becoming a Kree Protectorate isn’t something you get to back out of later.”

“Has anyone talked to Thor?” Johnny asked. “I kind of gathered that Earth was pretty much under Asgard’s protection, wouldn’t the Kree and Skrull be stepping on his and Odin’s toes if they try to move on us?”

Reed shook head. “Asgard’s gone, Thor’s king and he’s seeking refuge on Earth for what’s left of his people. From what I understand, Asgard looked at us as the most backwater of backwaters, technically we might have fallen under their umbrella but we weren’t worth paying attention to. With Asgard gone, any protection that might have offered is gone as well. We’re drawing intergalactic attention and if we don’t want to end up absorbed into one empire or another it would be to our advantage to deal with the Skrull ourselves. To show the Universe that Earth can stand up for itself.”

“Damn right,” Ben agreed. “So I’ve been playing catch up, here’s what I found.” He projected a map of Europe on the wall. The Skrull!Cap, he was sending Barnes and the ex-HYDRA Witch-girl on missions, saying it was about keeping the Accords in check. Barnes’d sort out the holes in their security and get the Witch in to do her mind-screw trick, make ‘em see reason or so Cap said. But since Cap ain’t Cap Barnes went back and took a second look at those missions. Sure enough, it turns out that the two of them might as well of been the Johnny Appleseed of Skrull plants. Course, those guys didn’t just get taken down, people start tracking where they came from: Manini Reddy, a buearcrat from Tamil Nadu, goes on vacation in Hungry a week after a run in with the Soldier and the Witch.” Ben pointed and a red dot appeared on the map. “Seif Koury, UN Delegate from Egypt, signs up for a symposium in Romania after meeting up with the duo. Suguro Omezo, aid to a Japanese Minister of State, goes to Serbia on a humanitarian mission. Melanie Murillo, works in the US state department, she took a trip to Croatia… Anyone notice what I’m drawing a bullseye around?”

Reed’s mouth thinned.

“Has anyone else noticed?” Sue asked.

Ben pulled up a video. Dr. Doom stood in front of the UN glaringly venomously from behind his mask. “Lies! You come and claim my country has been invaded! Doom would know! You think I would not see through your plot?! It is YOU who would use this as a pretext to invade me!! Do you think Doom has not unlocked secrets that would make your fusion bombs look like firecrackers?”

Ben hit pause and cut Doom’s rant off. “So it the Avengers or the UN go in, Doom treats it like an act of war and starts shooting off whatever nasties he’s got up tin-plated sleeve. If we go it’s just round five thousand and eight of Doom-boy and Reed trying to upstage each other.”

“I don’t,” Reed protested.

“Naw but he _thinks_ you do,” Ben said. “You could cure the common cold and Doom’d think that you did it to show him up. Point stands, if it’s us Doom won’t get overly excited unless it’s about seeing Suzy-Q there.”

“He’s not allowed to look at my sister,” Johnny muttered under his breath and Reed nodded in agreement.

Sue frowned at both of them. “I can give super-villains the brush off on my own, thanks.”

“So does that mean it’s a go?” Ben asked. “We fly over to Latveria and check if Doom has an alien infestation he’s too gone on himself to notice?”

“I suppose we’d better,” Reed sighed. “I wish Victor wasn’t so... loyal, I wouldn’t be insulted if he gave Tony a try for arch nemesis status.”

“Don’t be mean to poor Tony,” Sue replied. “Look at his _team_ , he doesn’t need enemies.”

“Come on Sis, Stark’s an asshole. You can’t really blame the Avengers for not liking him.”

Sue frowned, “Remember the Central Park team-up? The Avengers weren’t joking when they blamed Reed for Victor’s obsession with both him and me. The fight barely lasted ten minutes and the Scarlet Witch managed to work in three digs about Tony’s past while the Black Widow lit into me for asking where the Witch’s powers came from. The Falcon told Tony off for not joining the fight sooner since it was practically in his backyard, while Captain America was angry Tony showed up at all since he was technically retired.”

“It was only a few months after Ultron,” Johnny hedged.

“The digs were about having been a defense contractor,” Sue replied. “The Avengers are much too fond of laying blame and I hate double standards. Didn’t it make you uncomfortable to listen to them talk down to him?”

Johnny glanced away, “Well, I guess there had to be signs, what with a third of the team being being Skrulls… Or was it half? Were War Machine and Vision ever full members? We just didn’t catch it.” He pasted on a theatrical pout. “I guess that means we can’t hold it over Doomy if it turns out the Avengers were right about the Skrulls using his country for a base of operations,” he sighed

 

* * *

 

 

As the foursome’s jet slipped into Latverian airspace and everyone tensed. When it came to technology, stealth and otherwise, it was always a toss up as to whether Reed’s or Doom’s would win out in any given encounter between them. When no Doombots showed up to challenge them the team breathed a sigh of relief. They set down on the other side of a small rise from Doomstadt and Sue used her forcefields to lift the four of them discreetly over the wall that surrounded the city.

“A lot of Doombots around,” Ben observed as they hid in an alley. “Not to say anything nice about Doom but it doesn’t usually look so much like a police state around here.”

“UN rant aside, he probably was paying attention to what they found,” Reed said. “Don’t let the megalomania fool you, Victor isn’t stupid.”

Johnny’s attention was captured by something pressing up against the inside of basement window in the alley where they were hiding. He couldn’t really make out what it was, the inside of the room was dark, the ally was dim and the glass was dirty, but it bothered him. He crouched down beside the window and flexed his hand a few times, calling up his powers as an impromptu torch. Then he jerked back with a strangled gulp. Johnny’s foot hit the glass as he fell on his butt, breaking the window and a body fell out among the shards of glass.

The others turned back at the sound. Reed stretched out his neck to examine the basement. The room had been turned into a mass grave, packed with bodies until there was no room for more. “My God,” he breathed. “This- this- I didn’t think-” He shook his head. “I’d thought the Skrull were hiding among Victor’s people.”

“Do you think it’s the only one?” Johnny asked, choking on his words. Hoping it was just this one and feeling disgusted because saying it felt like minimizing what was in that room.

Ben shook his head. “The room’s _full_. They didn’t run outta bodies; they ran outta _space_.”

“We have to assume the worst,” Sue said. Even to her own ears she sounded detached. _‘Compartmentalization is good right now. We’re in hostile territory and-'_  She cut herself off before she could think too deeply what they’d found, before the part of her that just wanted to retch or scream could take over.

Out in the street a fire-fight broke out between a unit of five Doombots and the people in the street. A body, it’s chest half-blown away but not yet aware that it was dead, stumbled into the alley where the four hid, it transformed into a Skrull as it fell. Out in the street the fight heated up as more and more of the ‘people’ rallied against the Doombots, pulling out bulbous weapons that didn’t look like any Earth gun.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but help the Doombots,” Ben ordered.

Sue threw up a shield deflecting the strange weapons fire into the ground while Reed stretched his arms to snatch a few of the weapons from the unsuspecting Skrull, Ben simply clobbered the nearest combatant sporting alien tech but before Johnny had a chance to flame-on the Doombots abandoned the battle. They grabbed the four explorers and fled toward Doom’s castle.

“Let’s see what they want,” Reed advised as they were spirited away.

“Always love a chat with old Metal-Head,” Ben sighed in resignation.

They were deposited in the courtyard of Doom’s castle where an older model Doombot approached them with a medical tray. “Blood sample please,” it requested politely.

“I guess that answers the question of whether or not Victor knows he’s been invaded,” Sue said as she held out her hand. The Bot pricked her finger then daubed the resultant blood drop on a slide that it retracted into its body.

“We’re really doing this?” Johnny asked as Reed followed Sue’s lead.

“Strange as it sounds, we might be on Victor’s side for the moment,” Reed said.

“Good luck with that,” Ben snickered as he held out a large, stony hand to the old Doombot.

The ‘Bot promptly broke it’s needle on Ben’s skin. “This is irregular,” it informed them. “I must seek clarification of my operating parameters. Please be patient.”

“Since when’d Doom program them to be polite?” Johnny wondered. “Hey, do you give out bandages? They always give out bandages at the blood centers.”

“If you press on the wound for a moment it will cease bleeding,” the bot replied distractedly. Then it straightened, it’s chin tilted back, completely changing its body language in a moment. “Oh, it’s you,” Doom sneered through his Bot’s mouth. “Meddlers, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Victor, let us help,” Sue said for the team. “This is about the safety of the entire planet. I think our quarrels can be set aside for that.”

“Come,” Doom ordered and the old Bot turned, leading them into the castle.

Doom sat on his throne, chin leaned on one hand as he studied a dozen holographic screens, the optical inputs from several of his bots, closely. “There!” he suddenly exclaimed reaching out to touch one of the screens. “That one,” he said pointing out a particular individual.

Through the Doombot’s eyes they saw it open fire on the indicated man. A skrull corpse hit the ground a moment later and the whole room turned on the Doombots. Doom switched the screen to another unit before the battle could play out. “There are still some of my people out there,” Doom explained. “I cannot attack at random.”

“How many?” Reed asked.

Doom looked away. “They must observe the laws of mass conservation,” he said. “They can alter their density, to a degree. There is species variation among the Skrull, however they’ve sent soldiers to Earth. They can only mimic humans between fifty and a hundred and twenty-five kilograms.”

“The majority of adults,” Sue converted.

Doom nodded. “There was a boy, he tried to warn me. I have not been able to locate him since realizing his intentions.”

The four traded looks, then Sue stepped closer to Doom. “I’m sure you’ll find him soon,” she said gently. “How can we help?”

Doom glanced away from his screens for a moment. “There must be a way to disrupt their transformations, if not by science then by magic. But I have not had _time_ to investigate it. My people who still survive are _waiting_ for me to save them.”

Ben glanced at the screens. “Needs a human eye to pick out the impostures?” he sighed. “Gimme flushing duty, I’ve got a good eye for people and it frees the science types to look for a better solution.”

Doom nodded shortly as he surrendered his seat. “Your priority is to be my people!” he ordered. “If you see any children they are to be relocated to the castle without delay. If any rally to my side, bring them here. The Skrull will be there to be killed another day. All adult rescued must be tested before they are allowed to join the other refugees, the Skrull have tried slipping agents into my stronghold already.” Doom turned to Reed, “Richards, since you have some skill as a scientist, I will begin my search for a mystical solution while you look into the science. The lab on my third floor should be sufficient for your purposes.”

Reed rolled his eyes. “Sue, think you’re up to interdisciplinary interpretation?”

Sue smirked, “Play buffer between you and Victor and figure out what the two of you miss while not talking to each other? …It’ll be just like college. I’ll put in a call to Helen too, make sure we’re not duplicating efforts.” She turned to Doom. “You’re not the only one looking for that particular grail.”

“What do I do?” Johnny asked.

“Looks like you’re my gopher,” Ben said. “Hell, you might be the only one of us who actually gets to do any fighting anytime soon.” He raised his voice a bit. “Hey Viccy- I’m putting in a call to the UN saying your infestation has been confirmed as extreme. Don’t go getting trigger happy if you see a build up of quarantine forces on your borders.”

Doom responded with a negligent wave of his hand as he stomped toward one of his more alchemically equipped labs.


End file.
